Walk Like a Romantic – A Gentleman’s Guide

Exactly two weeks ago Prince William married Kate Middleton. I watched the ceremony as did millions, if not billions, of others on televisions and internet connections across the world. One thing that struck me as I watched the guests arrive was Prince Harry’s horrible posture. His shoulders lurched forwards and as he followed his brother to greet guests I thought of some Pete Lorre style minion. In all fairness, William was only slightly better. By contrast, when members of the old guard arrived they were, well, stunning. Straight, solid, erect and commanding in movements executed with effortless grace and style.

I was reminded of a reality television show a few years back called, Diets That Time Forgot. The plot was that twelve fat people are locked up in an old rural mansion and divided into three groups each representing an historical era: the Victorians, the Edwardians, and the 1920’s. Each group was subjected to the diet regime popular in their particular era. Not only did the participants have to dress the part; they also were taught how to walk the walk.

Every era has its own unique ideas concerning behaviours. Collectively, this creates a sort of temporal culture or zeitgeist, meaning “Spirit of the Age”. This is most obvious in the manner of dress associated with a particular era, but it also includes body movements. The experts in the television program pointed out that each era had a particular gait and bearing that was unique: Victorian bearing was noble and regal, the Edwardian was military, and the 1920’s was loose and flowing.

This is evident in the clothing of the period. As someone who wears Victorian styles daily, I say with absolute confidence that you do not wear the clothes rather the clothes wear you. Everything is forced firmly in its proper place, this goes for men as well as women.  I am by no means uncomfortable in my clothes, but the cry from the casual shirt, T-shirt, jeans, and trainers brigade is that they are comfortable clothes. Comfort is seen as the primary value in modern fashion, particularly men’s fashion.

When I first conceived to write this article my intention was to write on the subject of Victorian, Neo-Victorian, and Steampunk fashion but it took a detour in my mind. Mostly, I was distracted by my own perceived cleverness on the title which led to the brief discourse on posture. I console myself in saying that they are all part of the same picture. It was yesterday afternoon that I decided to focus on men’s fashion and this is why.

I saw a few women on Glasgow’s main drag, Buchanan Street, yesterday. One wore tight fitting brown leather trousers, brown boots, and I believe a white top and a short jacket that I do not remember. Another woman, possibly thirties, was wearing a calf-length brown skirt, brown boots, and a light brown/green military style jacket. A third was the female companion of an acquaintance of mine. She wore a black gothic lolita style dress, black tights, and calf-length white military gaiters, a fashion accessory in recent years employed by the Steampunk designer Kate Lambert, also known as Kato. All of these clothing choices could be labelled Neo-Victorian or Steampunk.

However, we can go a bit more subtle and mainstream with this. Every few years or so elements of Victorian fashion come into style and can be found in everyday shops. One example is the pagoda sleeve blouse. A fashionable woman can not only get away with indulging in such diverse expressions; she is expected to.

Men are far more limited.  For example, I may wear my winged-collar shirt with a thin black cravat tied in what is known as the American knot. This is perceived as strange. Male neckwear is not fashionable outwith a work environment and on top of that all forms of male neckwear other than the standard modern tie have been banished. The winged-collar was once a common alternative collared shirt, like the pagoda sleeve blouse for ladies, but now it is reserved only for formal wear and weddings.  Consider my earlier description of the women on Buchanan Street. Many of the elements are traditionally male garments. The boots, the military styles, the gaiters, the trousers, and yet today any man wearing the comparable male clothes would be the subject of stares and perhaps novelty or ridicule.

I once saw an episode of the program Grumpy Old Men, a show where older men complain about modern life. In this particular segment a well-known Briton aged in his sixties was complaining about youth fashion, but not as you might think. He was upset that it was so boring. Everything was a mass market rehash of styles pioneered by earlier generations of youth. Perhaps I’m being a grumpy old man myself when I say that there has been nothing interesting of worth from the youth scene since 80’s goth, though I will admit that in many ways the Naughties manifestation was an improvement on the theme.

In the world of youth fashion the goal is not necessarily causal and comfortable, though this may apply to the more mainstream teens. In the world of the alternative teen and young adult market the goal is to dress to impress and comfort be damned. Of course when the shows over the comfort clothes come-out, especially when the main show of youth is over and they join the ranks of the mundane. The problem being that developing a personal style takes time far beyond those provided in youth, and so many young people get it wrong and give up before they ever get it right.

My purpose here then is a brief guide for men who want to walk the walk of the Romantic, because women have enough social leeway when it comes to fashion.

First off, fashion begins in the heart and not the in the eye. What you choose to wear and how you carry yourself in your clothes is ultimately an expression of your soul. For this reason you need to find that soul of yours. There are two questions that you need to ask yourself. What is? and What ought?

I’m currently reading the book Northern Lights by Philip Pullman on which the film The Golden Compass was based. The story is set in a world where a person’s soul exists outside of themselves in the form of an animal called a daemon. I read this great passage where a sailor is discussing the relationship between a person and their daemon.

“There’s plenty of folk as’d like to have a lion as a daemon and they end up with a poodle. And till they learn to be satisfied with what they are, they’re going to be fretful about it. Waste of feeling that is.”

Stylists say that you should put a paper bag with eye-holes cut out over your head and look at yourself in the mirror. Analyse your body and accept it for what it is. Nothing worse than a fat girl dressed like a skinny one. She is far more attractive if she dresses for her size and body shape.  The same goes for the soul, that is, your psycho-emotional make-up. First know thyself. Know who you are and what you have to work with. If you do not start from a point of self-acceptance then no amount of clothing with change anything. It might just make it worse.

The next question is “What ought?” Who do you want to be? What image do you want to portray? For this I refer you to my theory of herotypes. The gist is this. Psychological tests have found that students taking a test while surrounded by pictures of scholars and intellectuals perform better than those without, but more importantly, they perform better than those being watched by a photo of Albert Einstein.

The human mind is subject to limiting self-beliefs. In many cases a person cannot perform because they believe that they cannot perform. The images of the stereotype scholars made the test takers feel a part of that group so their minds allowed them to perform better, but the image of a specific intellectual, like Einstein, represents an unattainable goal, so the mind gives-up.

Herotyping is simply surrounding yourself with images, objects, and cultural consumables (like films, books, etc) relating to a particular stereotypical group of which you want to be associated with. This includes clothing and bearing. Herotyping is a means of telling your subconscious mind the type of person that you want to become and letting that unconscious master at the switches do the rest without the conscious mind worrying about self-image.

A person can have many herotypes. A dominant one for me is “the gentleman adventurer”. This probably stems from my youthful connection with Indiana Jones, the respected scholar who goes on adventures. Others in this group would include Doc Holliday from Tombstone, the educated Southern gentleman and deadly pistoleer; or Lord Asriel from Northern Lights; and most Victorian heroes, such as Sherlock Holmes, Phileas Fogg, and others of note.

I once worked briefly showing homes and apartments in Beverly Hills. On one occasion I was riding to a site in my client’s car. He was not much older than me, but unlike me he had a very expensive car. Definitely from a wealthy family in contrast to me from a lower middle-class background who had gone to wealthy schools.

During the journey, I noticed something protruding from the bottom of my boss’s briefcase that I had borrowed and instinctively put my finger to it. Turns out it was a razor blade used for cutting carpeting away to show hardwood floors beneath it. So, I sliced my finger and simply pressed another finger against the wound. I mentioned it to my client and he went in hysterics and carried-on about going to the hospital. When I convinced him that it was not necessary, he says, “Don’t bleed in my car.” So here is this guy who over-reacts at the first sign of difficulty like a child, but when the difficult passes he’s more concerned about his upholstery.

For me, the gentleman adventurer herotype as it is expressed in the real world is someone who can move in well to do circles, be the scholar, and be well-dressed, but he is not feckless fop or coward like the client in my story. He is the man in the suit that you do not want to mess with. I discovered this fascinating little website of tropes (“a conceptual figure of speech, a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the audience will recognize and understand instantly.”) that includes examples of the Gentleman Adventurer. Quick disclaimer though, the site includes the parody figure of “the upper-class twit adventurer” in the mix, needless to say, this is not what I mean.  On the site I discovered other herotypes of mine that are apparently also tropes, identified as the “Rogue Scholar” and the “Badass Preacher”, both are intellectuals who have either rejected or are rejected by the academic or religious authority and bring their message to the people.

Concerning the Gentleman Adventurer, here is a description of Lord Asriel from Northern Lights:

“Lord Asriel was a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seemed to flash and glitter with savage laughter. It was a face to be dominated by, or fight; never a face to patronize or pity. All his movements were large and perfectly balanced, like those of a wild animal, and when he appeared in a room like this, he seemed a wild animal held in a cage too small for it.”

I believe that there are those who see me in a similar light, but I am by no means convinced. For me, this is the person I would like to be, but alas I am not. One important thing to remember about self-development in the Romantic vein, it is not about reaching your destination but rather closing the distance between your starting point and your unattainable goal.

I share this with you, my dear reader, by way of example. It is for each person to find their own herotypes and to consciously fill their lives with images, artefacts, people, and experiences that push them towards the goal of manifesting in the real world the thoughts and feelings of their inner world.  Romanticism begins with the self and it is your actions that define that self. Your thoughts, your feelings, and your mind are not you. They simply support and drive your actions. They are a means to an end and ultimately manifested through action.

So when we look at the clothes and the bearing of the Victorian, Edwardians, and the 1920’s folk as presented in the television series Diets that Time Forgot we see the zeitgeist of the eras. In the zeitgeist we see the individuals involved that compose it. The noble bearing of the Victorians demonstrates the Romantic virtue of pride born of accomplishment and self-respect. The military bearing of the Edwardians is that of the builders of Empire: militarily, culturally, and economically. The 1920’s style represented a relaxation after work as industry brought more leisure time to more people.

All three groups of people subscribed to the belief that “we live to work”. Through work the common man could rise through the ranks, through work empires are built, and through work more leisure time can be afforded. As denizens of the Romantic Era, all three group recognised that you are what you do and what you do is your work, so do your best, hold your head high for your accomplishments and honest work shall be its own reward.

Today, the West holds the opposite view. Today, “we work to live”. Work is a necessary evil that cuts into playtime. Extra work is penalised through taxation. Men and women of status and accomplishment achieved through hard work are scorned by those envious of their honestly earned profits and positions. And we all dress as though we are off to play at a moment’s notice. The common view these days is that you are what you feel, not what you do. So everyone must do what they can to feel good and make every moment count regardless of tomorrow.  The price that they pay is enormous consumer debt.

This casualness is reflected in the popular style of dress evident in most anywhere.  Unlike in a film or television program that has the benefits of a costume designer, real life fashion tends to be fairly routine, monotonous, and uniform.  Should you doubt me, go to any populated area and notice how many people are wearing the jeans, casual top (including T-shirts), and tennis shoes combination.  Once you’ve done that, start noticing how they move.

A future episode of Diets That Time Forgot, say sixty or seventy years from now, will no doubt have some historian describing how people walked in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.  There is plenty of room in the zeitgest for variation, but generally the body will hang naturally for its type.  For example, I am very tall and slender.  Tall people tend to hunch, lean their heads forward, and if they swing their long arms too broadly it gives the impression of an ape.  If you followed my experiment, you might noticed that the chin position angles downward as opposed the the upward slant of the Victorians or the straight gaze of the Edwardians.

To press my point, this is not universal.  You will no doubt witness swaggering men and poised women perambulating down the avenue communicating the desirable qualities of their particular gender and I applaud them for it.  These people, be they in casual attire or not, stand-out in contrast against the grey backdrop of the mundane.  But men, too much swagger, as seen in what I must call the either the street, ghetto, or gangsta walk, makes you look like an ape – no racism intended.

It has been said that casual clothing leads to casual thinking.  What is lacking is purpose and casual has very little purpose apart from comfort and uniformity.  The same holds true with casual body movements.  There is no awareness and no direction.  I have noticed the same phenomena paralleled in causal speech, where a thought is not fully considered and developed before someone tries to speak it and word meanings seem pretty much made-up on the spot.  Of course this is not universal, but I seem to be noticing this contingent in society growing.  Some call it casual, but I would presume that more traditional thinkers would simply call it laziness.

Here is another illustration from my personal life. I am often asked by people if I am going to work, a formal occasion, or to an event. In other words, in their worldview no one would dress like me unless they had to and the reasons that someone would “have to” are work, a formal occasion, or an event (which is playtime dress-up). I was once asked in all seriousness if the rodeo was in town because this man honestly wanted to attend. How does one answer that?

For there is the ever present danger of falling into the trap of wearing a costume.  Sometimes that’s something that you just cannot get around as so much depends on the perceptions of the viewer, but there are a few tricks.  The first thing I have already covered and that is self-believe.  Do you believe in yourself and in the image you are portraying?  If not then you will appear uncomfortable and thus more likely to lead people to believe that you are just a pretence.  Remember, part of this is bearing and attitude.  Without it, then you’re just playing dress-up.

Next point.  For men there are two rules – masculinity and elegance.  I did not makes these rules.  They come from Beau Brummel, the man who invented the men’s suit back circa 1800 and basic men’s apparel has not changed since.  Dressing masculine does not necessarily mean not dressing feminine, like the fops that Brummel and his fellow dandies brushed aside.  It also means not dressing like a boy.  What does that mean?  I honestly do not know, but I know it when I see it.  It’s a certain je ne sais quoi.  I will say that some track suits remind of a toddler’s romper suit.

Elegance is more easily defined.  To dress elegantly is to dress streamlined and purposeful.  So unless you are an aeronaut ditch the goggles and other pointless paraphernalia.  Think of it like the prat who wears sunglasses at night or in a dark club.  One silly bit of foppery from the Goth scene is the men’s trousers with buckles and straps to nowhere.

I once knew the son of the Duke of Carlisle.  He was the kind of person that everyone liked as soon as they met him.  A great guy.  I remember one night I was at a Goth club and he had just arrived from work wearing naught but black trousers, a white shirt, and I believe a plain black jacket.  From a fashion stand point, he out shown every guy there.  How?  Of course he had bearing, but more identifiable was his simple masculinity and elegance.  The moral of this story – don’t try too hard.  Keep it simple.  Think of your clothing as a mask that your soul speaks through.  If people are too distracted by the mask, then they cannot hear you.

Romanticism is not just a style of art; it is a style of life.  Walking like a Romantic means walking the true path of the glorified self of achievement.  My preference is the herotype of the Gentleman Adventurer.  It represents a masculine and elegant style the evokes my Victorian and Romantic values, but it is by no means the rule of law.  I am outspoken against the ubiquitous denim in our society, but I admit that there are some who exude masculinity and elegance in that attire just as there are those who are scarcely noticed when dressed the same . They say that clothes maketh the man.  This is true to an extent, but ultimately it is the quality, character, and strength of the individual man that maketh the clothes work.